Advances in neonatal care : official journal of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses
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Working in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) can be both rewarding and stressful. Stressors can outweigh satisfiers, leading to job dissatisfaction and turnover. Nurse retention remains a problem, particularly for nurses within the first year of employment. ⋯ Attention to staffing patterns is paramount. Team-building activities may help foster mutual respect and collegiality among the nursing staff and between disciplines. Research investigating creative staffing patterns would be helpful. Interprofessional research may also reduce stressors and enhance team performance.
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Family-integrated care (FICare) is an innovative model of care developed at Mount Sinai Hospital, Canada, to better integrate parents into the team caring for their infant in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The effects of FICare on neonatal outcomes and parental anxiety were assessed in an international multicenter randomized trial. As an Australian regional level 3 NICU that was randomized to the intervention group, we aimed to explore parent and staff perceptions of the FICare program in our dual occupancy NICU. ⋯ Further research is needed to assess the long-term impact of FICare on neonates, parents, and staff.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Neonatal Resuscitation Program Rolling Refresher: Maintaining Chest Compression Proficiency Through the Use of Simulation-Based Education.
Structured training courses have shown to improve patient outcomes; however, guidelines are inconsistently applied in up to 50% of all neonatal resuscitations. This is partly due to the fact that psychomotor skills needed for resuscitation decay within 6 months to a year from the completion of a certification course. Currently, there are no recommendations on how often refresher training should occur to prevent skill decay. ⋯ Additional research is needed to determine optimal refresher training frequency to prevent skill decay.
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Breastfeeding (BF), skin-to-skin care (SSC), and sucrose effectively reduce babies' pain during newborn blood work, but these strategies are infrequently used. Our team developed a parent-targeted video intervention showing the effectiveness of the 3 pain management strategies. ⋯ Future studies are required to evaluate the effectiveness of this parent-targeted intervention on increasing actual use of pain management in clinical practice.
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Despite technological advances in the neonatal intensive care unit, not all infants survive. Limited research has focused on infants' symptoms and suffering at end of life (EOL) from multiple perspectives. ⋯ Future larger sample research should prospectively examine parent perceptions of infant symptom burden, suffering, and associations with other infant and parent outcomes (eg, decision making and grief).